Editorial: Inattentiveness by Cal Fire an insult to ridge

For the past 10 years, ever since the state budget went sour, Cal Fire has decided it can't afford to have an employee sitting in the lookout tower on Sawmill Peak, watching for fires, except perhaps during red flag warnings.

In a commendable and remarkable effort, though, citizens in Paradise and Magalia have stepped up.

Citizen Les Olinger quickly organized a group of interested people and called it Friends of the Sawmill Peak Lookout. They raise thousands each year so that Cal Fire can afford to keep a person in the tower during the four months or so of fire season. Having that extra set of eyes in the tower has proved its value many times. And ridge residents clearly think of it as a security blanket.

Ridge residents and Olinger's group have held fundraisers constantly since 2005 to help pay that person's salary. They have money in the bank to do it again this year.

So why is the lookout unstaffed? Because Cal Fire hasn't bothered to hire anybody.

The lack of urgency in hiring is a slap in the face to the people on the ridge who have worked so hard to keep it open. Olinger opened the Lookout Store, a secondhand store that donates its proceeds to the lookout staffing effort. There's a fundraising group called Bare on the Ridge. There are numerous local businesses in town that have jars for the effort, where citizens can drop in change and dollars. It all adds up.

Olinger says the group has $16,000 right now to get that empty tower staffed with two firefighters who rotate shifts. But Cal Fire hasn't hired anybody.

The agency says there are about 10 candidates waiting to be interviewed and the tower may be staffed by August. Normally, it's staffed by July 1.

Cal Fire's Greg McFadden, the county's interim fire chief, said a new hiring process is slowing things down. All applications for all towers in the state have to go through Sacramento first, then qualified applicants are sent back to local sites. The 10 qualified applicants, including the firefighter who did the job last year, have not even been interviewed yet.

We can't believe that during a drought, Cal Fire didn't make this a top priority. Cal Fire should have figured this out in January, not July. There's no excuse for the delay.

As Cal Fire sent out alerts about dry lightning and a red flag warning Thursday and Friday, the tower that overlooks Paradise, Magalia and Concow sat empty. The inattentiveness is unforgivable.